In an effort to spread the game across the country, the Guyana Badminton Association (GBA) at the weekend introduced the Shuttle Time Project to two schools in the county of Berbice.
A team, led by President of the Guyana Badminton Association and national coach Gokarn Ramdhani, visited the New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary School and the Berbice High School to interact with students, share details on the Shuttle Time Project and distribute equipment.
Ramdhani was accompanied by Guyana’s top national and international players Narayan Ramdhani, Priyanna Ramdhani and Akili Haynes.
Shuttle Time was introduced in Guyana in 2017, with the target group being Primary and Secondary school teachers, and the aim being to introduce children aged 5-15 to badminton.
During the visits, the Association presented the schools with Shuttle Time Kits of Racquets, Shuttlecocks and Nets to help them with keeping the sport of Badminton active at the schools.
Narayan and Priyanna also made a personal presentation of 11 racquets to potential players of both schools to encourage them to pursue the sport.
The Association expressed gratitude to Headmistress of Berbice High School, Coleen Liddell, and the Head of Allied Arts, Ceon Bristol, of the New Amsterdam Multilateral School, along with the Physical Education teachers for arranging the large turnout of students for the Shuttle Time Project at their respective schools.
The next stop for the Shuttle Time project is Linden.
Shuttle Time is the first such programme to be hosted in Guyana, and it came to fruition following Guyana Badminton Association president Gokarn Ramdhani making representation at the BWF’s AGM in Gold Coast, Australia, in May 2017.
“It’s going to be a very good course for Guyana, especially for the teachers training the children for CSEC. It is also a basic programme to help us with the development plan for badminton in Guyana because now the teachers will be assisting us to get up the players and then we get them out into the areas and the teams and clubs we would want them to go,” Ramdhani said back then.
The Badminton Association, over the years, has been clamouring for the sport to be prominent in schools nationwide, and Ramdhani believes the hosting of the Shuttle Time project is a positive step in that direction.
“Because we’ve tried implementing badminton in a lot of schools for the past 7-8 years; we donated racquets, shuttlecocks and nets…we did programmes for them but nobody never followed up. So now that we get the P.E teachers, I hope this is a better way to get it more developed,” Ramdhani revealed at the launch in 2017.
Guyana became the 106th country where the Shuttle Time Programme was introduced.
